Why you should use nostalgia to promote more giving

I recently stumbled upon a neat paper titled Nostalgia: The Gift That Keeps Giving. Here’s a summary:

Overview
1. Nostalgia is a very personal, social emotion that involves momentous life events and social bonds.
2. Charitable giving is a very personal, social behavior.
3. Nonprofits regard donation encouragement as their single most important challenge.

Question: Does nostalgia promote charitable giving and volunteerism?

The Answer: Yes!

Here’s what they determined:
1. Nostalgia increases concrete, tangible and general charitable intentions.
2. The mediator of the effect of nostalgia on charitable intentions is empathy.
3. Therefore, nostalgia augments empathy-based charitable intentions and behavior.

The MarketSmart takeaway:
Think about ways you can entwine nostalgia in your engagement fundraising efforts. For instance, if you work for a college or university consider the following:

• Offer your prospects a free copy of the yearbook from their graduation year.
• Show them photos of the campus and the students from the days when they attended the school.
• Invite them to share a story from their college days.

Here’s a real-world example:
For our friends at Ocean Conservancy, we used a photo to remind planned giving prospects about the time they first fell in love with the ocean. It worked like a charm.

Related Posts

How to make the initial engagement with a planned giving prospect
Words That Work: The Phrases That Encourage Planned Giving

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